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Sunday, October 25, 2015

One Kid. One Task. One Strategy.

"Dad,"
Bubs 2 hung his head over me as I woke up the other morning. "For
lunch, I want a pickle. Oh yeah, I want more chips too." He informed of
his lunch menu before I even had a chance to yawn and stretch after a
night's sleep.

I got up and prepared both bubs lunches for
the day. I added a pickle and "more chips" to Bubs 2's lunch, because I
had his little voice in my head telling me to do so.

He
loves pickles and so does Bubs 1. I do too. Bubs 1 told me to get some
pickles a few days earlier. I did. We did actually. On our way home from
picking up Bubs 2 at his preschool, both bubs' and I discussed pickles.

We
pick up Bubs 2 and strap him into the car. We head back home. "(Bubs
2)," his brother said, " Dad is bringing us to buy pickles."

It was an uneventful car ride, which is always a good thing. Sadly, we only bought two jars of pickles.

I
have said this before and I'll keep saying it again and again. Bubs 2
is a piece of cake. He has his terrible three moments, but I know that I
can rein him in. Like other neurotypical kids, Bubs 2 can challenge his
mom and I all day sometimes, but nothing to the extremes that his big
brother goes to.

I had a "Bubs 1 epiphany" today.
Or, I should say another Bubs 1 epiphany. I have to start numbering
these epiphanies, because they are almost weekly now. I also need to
write them down (like on this blog), because it's hard to remember them
all.

I am programmed to use the same method to solve a
problem. A pretty straight forward approach. It's like following a
recipe or using the old-school payphones. For the latter, just drop in a
quarter and it works every time.There's no need to guess or try another
way.

Bubs 1 doesn't operate like that. In staying
with the payphone metaphor, Bubs 1 sometimes takes quarters. Sometimes
he only take dimes. Sometimes he only takes nickels. And sometimes he
only takes pennies. He just never tells us which coin he accepting on any given task requested of him.

I
recently told Bubs 1 that I'm giving him 40 seconds to get dressed.
This is on the heels of multiple other failed strategies for him to get
dressed. Most of the latter were met with Bubs 1 doing everything else
but getting dressed. I thought of this idea from a past article, which
encouraged allowing Autistic children additional time to engage a task.
The article didn't say to count out loud, but I did. I walked away from
his bedroom counting so not to micromanage (although I was).

It worked!

Although
this strategy doesn't work for other tasks I want Bubs 1 to complete, it
does, at least for now, seem to work for getting dressed/changed in his
bedroom. I attempted to apply this same strategy so to get him started
on his homework (which has always been a monumental challenge), but it
backfired. Instead of jumping to his homework, he just screamed to the
top of his lungs. "Dad! Stop counting me! I won't do this if you count
me!"

Note to self: to get Bubs 1 dressed/changed count to 40. To get Bubs 1 to complete his homework, don't count to 40.

Well, I just ate the last pickle from the last pickle jar in the fridge. It's a quiet victory, but I will take it.